Reel Reaction Charters – Barnegat Bay Fishing Report (5/29/17)

I hope everyone had a great Memorial Day weekend! It was a hectic weekend with my son playing 5 baseball games in 2 days. But with his travel season finally winding down, I’m in full swing for charters. The inlet and surrounding waters had a decent bite on Bluefish & Striped Bass, and Fluke are cooperative on the tides if you find clean water. The bigger Bass are still being caught mostly on the troll, but the snag-n-drop has started to get better. Regarding fluking, you can definitely see the effects of the rain runoff from fertilizers as the bay has a ton of algal slime right now. Just a reminder: I have weekends and weekday afternoons available through June 18th, and starting JUNE 19th will run 7 DAYS A WEEK UNTIL SEPTEMBER.

I did manage to get out and had Emil Slane, James D, and Xavier S. of New York, NY on a 4hr Bay/Inlet charter for a variety of species. The crew tried fishing the inlet for Striped Bass, but it was covered up by feisty Blackfish with the slow current. The guys boated Blackfish to 5 pounds as it was hard to get the bait to the Bass. All the Blackfish were promptly released as they are out of season. We spent the remainder of the trip fishing the backwaters, but the crew could only muster short fluke with the biggest being 17 inches. All in all, the guys didn’t do too bad for their first time fishing the salt.

With a quick window in the morning, I took my wife and son on a brief Fluke trip to check a different part of the tide. Jen struck first with a solid 19.5 inch Fluke on the first drift, followed by Luke’s first Striper on the bucktail. This one he caught all by himself. After several drifts of short Fluke, Luke jigged an 18-incher that made it into the box. With two Fluke in the box and enough for dinner, we headed home and left them biting. We released about 15 Fluke and 1 Striped Bass in about 2 hours, keeping 2 Fluke for the table. It was definitely a better bite on the tide.

If interested in booking a charter, book through the website (reelreactioncharters.com), or call/text 609-290-7709 . As always, we use the highest quality gear and everything is included all gear, tackle, fish-cleaning, and ICE – it’s “no worries” fishing. Just come aboard and FISH.

**The tide data above is for the Ocean Front Beaches of Long Beach Island. It is sourced from Brainware’s Tide Graph Pro, an awesome tide app for smartphones. The data is slightly different from the tide chart provided at our store. Printed copies are available in store.